The Swordswoman in White / The Story of Red Temple Lily: Continuing with the pile of craptastic EastWestDVD's double feature dollar DVDs is this collection of kung fu films featuring women as martial arts heroes. I shall divide this review into two parts so as to give each film the justice it "deserves."

The Swordswoman in White is perhaps the most bizarre kung fu I have ever seen. The story is rather bland with the typical rebels against the corrupt government plot-line which has been done a million times before. I doubt I would write more than four or five sentences on this silly little film if not for one aspect. This film has the most comical dubbing I have ever heard.

Bad dubs are common for kung fu fans. Who can forget the old films where the same three people did all the voices and characters frequently used the word "reckon" all the time? Yet these films with their crappy dubbing were largely incompetent because their key sin was ignorance. Swordswoman's dubbing was not based on ignorance but instead was meant to be bad. Watching this is something like watching "What's Up Tiger Lily?" or "Kung Pow" except without any good jokes.

Second on our double feature disc is an older and more familiar style film, "The Story in the
Red Temple Lily." As is typical with EastWest, the title is presented incorrectly on both the disc and the cover.

This film is 100% typical of the Mandarin Kung Fu films made at the time and was actually quite dull despite having some nice female martial artists. In fact, the martial arts weren't really that interesting at all. The one interesting thing about the film is the fact that it features large prop birds that carry people around.

My final verdict is that Swordswoman is at best a guilty pleasure and unwatchable at worst. Red Temple Lily on the other hand is just plain boring. Therefore I would have to give a verdict of "not worth the dollar" on this release.

Labels: Dollar DVD, Hong Kong